THE LIFE IN NAZARETH
4. Routine.
Yet, there is a difficulty to be avoided. If want of order begets inconstancy, too strict an adherence to order might bring about mechanical routine, namely, the doing of things out of mere, machine-like, robot-like habit.
And this, of course, leads to indifference, to spiritual lukewarmness, to the doing of things without relish and without profit. Do not, consequently, mistake mechanical automatic routine for order.
Your advancement will be great if you do with real fervor whatever you do out of rule. Mechanical routine does to our spiritual life what the moth does to clothes. It spoils everything. A great part of the merit of our actions--and sometimes the whole of their merit--vanishes on account of this accursed mechanical routine.
Look at Our Lady in Nazareth. Order, method, rule, exactness and perseverance prevailed there. But there was no mechanical routine. Why? Because She always kept in the presence of Jesus. The presence of God and the presence of Mary are the great means of combating thoughtless routine.
4. Routine.
Yet, there is a difficulty to be avoided. If want of order begets inconstancy, too strict an adherence to order might bring about mechanical routine, namely, the doing of things out of mere, machine-like, robot-like habit.
And this, of course, leads to indifference, to spiritual lukewarmness, to the doing of things without relish and without profit. Do not, consequently, mistake mechanical automatic routine for order.
Your advancement will be great if you do with real fervor whatever you do out of rule. Mechanical routine does to our spiritual life what the moth does to clothes. It spoils everything. A great part of the merit of our actions--and sometimes the whole of their merit--vanishes on account of this accursed mechanical routine.
Look at Our Lady in Nazareth. Order, method, rule, exactness and perseverance prevailed there. But there was no mechanical routine. Why? Because She always kept in the presence of Jesus. The presence of God and the presence of Mary are the great means of combating thoughtless routine.
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